The MetaMinecraft Project

Minecraft inside Minecraft. It's possible.
I'm sure many people already joked about making Minecraft out of redstone (yo dawg etc), with all the complex redstone circuits arising. However, recently, I saw the 16-bit ALU, and it motivated me to actually try to get this done. Unfortunately, I have no textbook guiding me, and I never took an actual course (I learned stuff on my own) in electronics nor computer science (ignoring the introductory class), so I'm gonna need all the help I can get, and all the motivation to prevent me from stopping midway. It might even make history, because this may be the first instance of a game inside itself.

If there's anyone (with sufficient knowledge in digital electronics and computers) interested in helping out, please post or PM me.
I'm considering having a SMP server to build this with other people (redstone works if you don't use switches, buttons, etc).
I've learned, from attempting to build a Turing machine, that I should really share as much of the process as possible with a set layout so people wouldn't get lost when debugging.

Planned features of MetaMinecraft
A redstone display with pending resolution
Ability to walk in 4 directions (one block per step) and rotation in all directions (in 30 degree increments)
16*16*16(4096) world (possibly with randomized generated terrain, but that's unlikely)
Build/destroy blocks directly in front of player
Gravity, where the player falls one block per step
Climbing 1 block high ledges, to eliminate jumping
Obstruction
Perspective
Block rendering done in steps

Things to keep in mind
Optimize computation time (keep buses short)
Balance between compactness and accessibility (for debugging/demonstrating)/designing time
Label components and modules with different types of blocks

I'm currently thinking about what components are needed, and how they'll work and be connected. I got some details fleshed out, and if you're interested, I can post them. This needs to be done first, since it's better to make a planned layout of the entire computer from the start.
Once the components and connections are figured out, then comes the frustrating part designing them. After that the tedious part of building them.

Idea for future: MetaMinecraft with redstone blocks, to make it theoretically possible to make a MetaMetaMinecraft.

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My Youtube channel.
Contains Pachebel's Canon made with noteblocks, a working Rubik's cube made with pistons, and the ultimate TNT cannon.

I hate to give you some bad news but its not going to happen. Even when you watch that video he might be using over 50 gates. (Lord knows I stopped counting on this damn 4 bit counter). Even my striped down rough draft of just a 2-bit cpu looks to use more than 200. Thats not including the huge shift array rom storage. I am just going to have to use a map editor for that monster.

But all these problems are easy to solve in TTL chips. Hell, even using raw transistor's. The rules in this game make it very difficult to implement gates en-mass. The fact you have to put down an inverter every 15 blocks to keep a bus line alive. You have this global tick that calculates the redstone rules and you cannot be guaranteed that your system will process everything at the same time. That means more buffers for your lines. Oh, did I mention Minecraft is in alpha and all these rules can change?

That being said I love the game. This whole redstone system is like a huge fun logic puzzle for me:)

Check out the web ring below at the bottom of the link if you want to do it yourself or get an idea of what goes into a cpu. Its a fun project by itself.

I hate to sound like yet another pessimist, but WarlockD is right. The duplication of Minecraft within Minecraft, via redstone, WILL NOT HAPPEN.
Even if you were to assemble the hundreds of millions of gates it would likely require, it would be so inefficient (assuming the game didn't crash or lock up altogether) that it would probably take the rest of your lifetime just to compute one tick of gameplay and render it.

I would suggest starting with small projects and working your way up to something slightly realistic. Maybe Tic-Tac-Toe or Connect Four with AI for single player. (those would be final projects, for me anyhow)

Well, the first computer in the world managed to do some calculations. We have done that. Now, it is possible to make a "screen" from redtorches, but to wire everything up and make it so one click shuts multiple torches and lits more at once? mmm.

This sounds like a smart person trying to do a really dumb thing. I mean, I'm not trying to insult anybody here, but really, listen to this! That'd be like somebody running a Windows 7 virtual machine on a Windows 7 computer; incredibly pointless and a waste of time!

Sorry, but I think you could find a better way to spend your time.

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Just because theory allows it doesn't mean you can do it. The game's optimization would prohibit the kind of thing you would need here. Also, it would be prohibitively complex anyway, almost undesignable. A simple ALU or RAM array is peanuts compared to making the whole thing working together. It would probably take minutes, if not longer, for a single system tick, too.

someone posted this up on the EVGA forums and I'll basically say the same thing here as I did there (maybe a bit more indepth):
For a display you're pretty much limited to using restone torches. So that's a 1 colour display, also, it'd have to be far enough away for it to be decent resolution to be usable and viewable.
There's 8 bits per byte - pong was like, what, 2kb or even less, still though, 2000 bytes of coding is a lot for really low level coding. The atari was like 1Mhz, and it would have had quite a few chips in it to make it all work.

If you aren't going to program in binary or hex or whatever, what will you use for input? A giant "keyboard" of pressure plates or buttons where you can maybe type like 5 wpm? And even if you did implement that, what are you going to do to program the initial environment (OS or whatever) to start programming your stuff?

Anyway, I think if pong can be accomplished that would be an uber achievement, and 2 buttons per player would be more doable than an entire keyboard.

I think it's awesome this is possible and there's people doing it, but I really think we should be realistic here.

Seriously guys, why don't you just try to make the most efficient 'conways game of life' computer out of redstone?
Considering conways game of life only needs a 3x3 display at the minimum, it should be easy to make a proof of concept.

I've always had a bad habit of taking massive leaps instead of small steps.

I already said that MetaMinecraft will be heavily simplified compared to the Minecraft right now, though I'm not sure if it was already taken to account.
But since it appears no one wants to actually help me, I'm asking my school computer science teacher who happens to play Minecraft, and a group of schoolmates who also play Minecraft (I'm still shocked by how many people I know in real life play Minecraft). Perhaps this combined power of autism will make MetaMinecraft real (or at least, save a lot of time).
Another note: MetaMinecraft is going to be programmed with Minecraft hardware, not software with its own programming language. That's just taking it way too far.

We must distinguish the difference between "impossible" and "improbable." And, again, if this works, it may be the first instance of a self-engulfing game.

Also, what do you expect from a resident mad scientist? 8D

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My Youtube channel.
Contains Pachebel's Canon made with noteblocks, a working Rubik's cube made with pistons, and the ultimate TNT cannon.